Donna Vekic used a return to Charleston to arrest a slide in form and to reset ahead of the clay season. After an apparel switch to Ellesse and the tour’s marketing photoshoot at Indian Wells, the former Wimbledon semifinalist edged Ajla Tomljanovic, 3-6, 6-1, 6-4, in a match that stretched the Croat’s patience and resolve.

The victory followed a mixed start to 2026 that has seen Vekic slip from a career-high of No. 17 to No. 79 at the end of last year and fall out of the Top 100 for the first time since 2022. She defended her level while diagnosing the fine margins where matches have turned away from her.

“I’ve definitely had a good level of tennis from the beginning of the year,” Vekic said. “I lost the first round to Alex [Eala] in Auckland and then I lost to Mirra [Andreeva] in Australia. Those two were really tough matches but I played really well. I made the finals [at a WTA 125k] in Manila, too, so I’m playing really good tennis. I just need to believe in myself a bit more in these tough situations in matches.”

Her approach has been pragmatic. After missing the Miami Open main draw she stayed in North America, working in a Boca Raton practice block and accepting support from former coach Pam Shriver through Yonex’s Mindset and Performance Program. Training included practice sets with Tomljanovic and off-court breaks such as horseback riding in Wellington.

“It’s always challenging, it’s always tough,” she said of her latest comeback. “I’m definitely more towards the end of my career. The way I look at it is just to give it my best. If it works out, great. If it doesn’t, I’ve had a pretty good career with a lot to be proud of.”

Vekic acknowledged the need for freer tennis and less tension in big moments. She celebrated meeting a friend in a first-round draw with a simple dinner on Daniel Island and then converted that momentum into her first green-clay win since 2015, joking about the surface: “It’s faster than the red clay, and it’s green. So, I try to imagine it’s a grass court!”

“I’m trying to play a little bit more freely. Sometimes when you want it so bad, you have the opposite effect. You get tighter, more nervous. So, I’m just trying to relax a bit. Donna Vekic

Paula Badosa revealed at Media Day for the Credit One Charleston Open that a torn labrum in her right hip, not a recurring back problem, was at the root of much of her 2025 pain and inconsistency. Her withdrawal from the US Open — the second time in three years — had been widely attributed to her prior back issue.

“People don’t know,” Badosa confirmed during her Media Day interview at the Credit One Charleston Open. “A lot of people have been asking me about the back and that’s something I’m trying to figure out but it’s at least under control. It’s not that now. Last year, starting in February and especially after Wimbledon, it was my psoas touching the tendon. But then I broke my labrum. It’s all very connected, but it’s tough to compete like this.”

She traced the problem to a tendon irritation in her psoas that began in February and said the situation worsened into a full-brown labrum tear around Wimbledon last summer. Badosa declined surgery for the moment and has returned to injections to manage pain. Earlier in her career a back injury required cortisone injections and contributed to a fall outside the Top 100, yet she rebuilt her ranking and reached the 2025 Australian Open semifinals.

“I was maybe at my best level after Australia,” said Badosa, who described feeling blindsided by the injury, which began as pain in her right psoas muscle. “Then all of the sudden, I saw myself on the couch again for the second time.”

“I didn’t know if I had the strength to fight again because I know what it is to come back from an injury, from zero. It’s like a mountain sometimes, and to get back to the level I want to get is difficult. For me, it was very tough, seeing myself like that. Personally, I’ve been through difficult times and it wasn’t easy because it came all together.”

She showed signs of form with a WTA 125K semifinal in Austin this month but admitted uncertainty remains. “Some days I wake up and I’m like, ‘Wow, I have to compete today? How am I going to do it?’ There’s so many things in my brain sometimes that I’m not even thinking about the match. It’s stressful for me.”

Badosa also discussed the mental battle of injury and recovery. “I think we all have two voices in our head,” Badosa mused on Monday. “Sometimes you can control the negative a bit better, and then there’s other times or moments in your life where you cannot. I think I’m in a bit of the latter situation. For me, personally, it has been very tough the last year when I got injured. From the moment I got it, I was thinking what it took to get me in that place again and how it had escaped from my hands again.

“It hurts me, in a way. I’m not seeing my tennis where it’s supposed to be or where I’d like it to be. So, that’s a little bit the mental battle I have with myself. I’m trying to deal with it, seeing it with perspective and patience. Still, I’m very competitive and I have that side in me. It’s a tough balance to find.”

Badosa leans on a team led by childhood friend-turned-coach Pol Toledo, who helped guide the 2021 BNP Paribas Open champion out of the wilderness in 2024. She enters Charleston with a 7-8 record this season and said she will continue while her body allows. “I still love this sport too much,” smiled Badosa. “I have so much passion for this sport. I notice it every time I come to compete. I have goosebumps no matter where I play. I just love that moment. On the court, I can express myself and I enjoy it. It’s what I’ve been doing all my life and it’s my passion. I also realize how much I love this sport when I go to play with my little sister. I just enjoy the moment of grabbing a racquet and hitting some balls.

“For now, because I love it so much, if the body respects me in a way and I can handle it, I will play until one day when I really want to stop. Right now, these emotions are more powerful than the other one that wants to stop.”

Jessica Pegula arrives in Charleston as the tournament’s top seed and reigning champion, and this week she also reaches a significant personal milestone: her 200th straight week inside the WTA Top 10. Pegula, ranked No. 5, won the Charleston title last season, her first tour-level clay-court trophy at the WTA 500 level.

Her Top 10 run has been uninterrupted since June 6, 2022. On that date she moved from No. 11 to No. 8 after reaching the quarterfinals of Roland Garros and has remained among the elite ever since. The current streak is the third-longest among players presently in the WTA Top 10, trailing only Aryna Sabalenka and Iga Swiatek.

Viewed by ranking bands, Pegula’s Top 10 tenure shows notable consistency. Across 200 weeks she has occupied positions between No. 3 and No. 9 for the entire span. Ninety-five percent of those weeks, 190, have been spent in the No. 3-7 range. Eighty-seven percent, 173 weeks, were within No. 3-6. She has been inside the Top 5 for 71 percent of the period, a total of 142 weeks.

Pegula reached her career-high ranking of No. 3 for the first time on October 24, 2022. She has now spent 52 weeks at No. 3, a little over a quarter of her Top 10 stay.

The milestone arrives as she attempts to defend the title she earned on Charleston clay, a victory that marked a new surface achievement in her career. The 200-week mark underlines both her durability and her steady position among the tour’s best since breaking into the Top 10 in mid-2022.

© 2026 Robert Prange